Press
COLOSSAL MAGAZINE
Interview: The Founders of the Neon Art Collective ‘She Bends’ Discuss the Womxn at the Forefront of the Trade
Since co-founding She Bends, Meryl Pataky and Kelsey Issel have been upending the notion that neon signage is solely a commercial endeavor. The duo fosters a collective of womxn creating the illuminated works, offering support for the artists while working to make the medium more sustainable and diverse.
Especially in times like these, there should be an inherent responsibility that messages, especially those in bright lights, be important messages or calls to action. Talking about things that are uncomfortable, shedding light on them, should be the role of neon art, and in my experience is the work I like the most. —Meryl Pataky
Juxtapoz
Neon artist Meryl Pataky is curating a revolutionary show of 29 female artists
Like most art forms, neon bending is a male-dominated field, and Pataky chose artists who have overcome this challenge and create work that stands out. Conceptual content and messaging is key to these artists’ work, stretching beyond neon’s traditional applications and exploring light as an art form…
San francisco chronicle
Glass bender melds art, science to create and restore neon signs
Amy Palms has been perfecting her skills as a glass bender for more than 20 years. Palms, a Brooklyn native, studied glass blowing, neon and mixed-media sculpture at Alfred University in Upstate New York, where she fell in love with the art of neon.. …Most notably, Palms worked with other glass benders to restore the Castro Theatre sign for filming of the movie “Milk.”…
COntemporary art curator mag
olivia steele
Olivia Steele uses neon lighting to charge spaces with ironic and spiritual meaning. Steele’ s work ranges from small to large installations that employ the traditional commercial medium of neon glass to make intimate statements that often question modern culture. Steele relishes the idea of contrast and contradiction and plays with our innate preconceptions…
pbs kqed
scientific sculpture with meryl pataky
Meryl Pataky is a sculptor who works with many materials, including neon. Watch as Pataky and crew install a "living wall" sculpture and check out her process for bending glass tubes into letters…
wired
Watch Artist Shawna Peterson Make Bright, Buzzing Neon Art
Shawna Peterson bends glass tubes for a living. She makes neon art, … bent two-inch circles for a wall sized circuit board for Dolby Labs, and created a sign that simply says "Wash Me" for a San Francisco laundromat. The shining remnants of her past and future projects can be seen scattered throughout her workspace. It lies on the border of Oakland, California, and neighboring Emeryville, just blocks from Pixar Studios in an area dotted with warehouses, workshops, and art studios…
Artnet News
Editors Pick: 19 things not to miss in new york’s art world this week
Brooklyn music venue Elsewhere is unveiling new works of art by artists Bread Face, Zoe Burke, Dani Bonnet, Grace Miceli, and gloflo in a program led by art director Molly Surno. Candace Moeller, associate director at Cristin Tierney Gallery in New York, is also curating a selection of films for a pop-up movie theater at the space, while perfumer Marissa Zappas, Elsewhere’s first artist-in-residence, will create custom fragrances to “scent” the venue…
fashion magazine
Get Lit With Meryl Pataky’s Smashbox Collaboration
Gift-set packaging can be a lot of things… Smashbox is flipping that idea on its head … in collaboration with California-based neon-light artist Meryl Pataky, the makeup sets come in neon boxes that shine bright—no electricity required—and are totally worth keeping long after the gift wrap has been torn away…
npr kqed
san francisco was once aglow with neon
“Everyone is reverting to a historical look, a vintage look. It’s very popular now, but there’s less of us doing it, and we’re all swamped,” she says.
The city has changed its tune on neon signs, too. The tenant facade improvement program that once gave businesses money to remove their neon signs now gives out grants to restore signs…
she/folk
interview with neon artist meryl pataky
Meryl Pataky is a master in the art of neon. Her work revolves around elements found in the periodic table including silver, copper, iron, carbon and noble gasses. Inspired by universal connectedness, Meryl creates abstract and text-based works integrating the chemical process of creating neon, the technical skills of welding and glass-bending, and a little bit of electricity…
cbc television
neon has traditionally been a man’s world - but robin clason is bending the rules
Robin Clason is the only woman in the country (Canada) who owns and operates her own neon bending studio. As she'll point out, the field has typically been male-dominated. Now, Clason is part of a small community of women who are innovating in the world of neon bending. She got to meet many of them at She Bends, an exhibition of works by women in the neon world.
Juxtapoz
"She Bends: Women In Neon" Heads To Milwaukee's Var West Gallery
"Bringing “She Bends” to Milwaukee was very important to me the second I got wind of its reception… in San Francisco. The content and message immediately had my interest… This conversation needs to continue to happen in all industries and what Meryl and the rest of these amazing woman sculptors have done in the neon world will surely help shed more light on it.” -Owner of Var, VarWest and Hawthorn Contemporary - Josh Hintz…
live fast magazine
With Her Own Hands: She Bends Highlights 29 Female Neon Artists
The Museum of Neon Art recently debuted She Bends: Women in Neon, the largest and most inclusive all-female neon exhibition… Ever. She Bends features 29 artists who use neon as their primary medium, despite being in the midst of a primarily male-dominated trade. Each work is intimate, with the woman either bending the tubes herself or installing and assembling with her own hands…
my modern met
Neon Art That Speaks to the Heart
For anyone who’s ever experienced the highs and lows of being in love, you’ll appreciate these neon sculptures by Olivia Steele. The London and Berlin-based artist creates intimate statements that evoke an emotional response. For last year’s Frieze Art Fair, she placed her neon signs in public spaces all around London in an exhibition she appropriately called Public Displays of Affection…
Paper mag
neon artist kate hush places fierce women in the spotlight
While some people are breaking glass ceilings, others are bending them into their own creation. Take Brooklyn-based artist Kate Hush, who designs and fabricates towering creations made of neon -- forming glass and light into vibrant femme fatales, whether they be strutting their stuff or secretly concealing a knife…
Fast company
the spectacular tech-inspired art dolby’s new headquarters
Dolby is about to formally unveil its new headquarters, complete with a ribbon-cutting ceremony presided over by the mayor of San Francisco, Ed Lee. Shawna Peterson of Peterson Neon in Oakland, California, re-created a diagram for Dolby’s noise-reduction circuitry–the company’s original technology–as one of the most intricate neon signs you’ll ever see…
pabst blue ribbon
electric winter
Our friend Dani Bonnet curated an incredible line-up of artists for a neon and mixed-media art show we put on at Innerspace LA…
Architectural digest
SOFA Chicago Return
SOFA Chicago, the longest-running fair focused on three-dimensional art in the U.S., is coming to Navy Pier on October 31. The 26th edition of the fair is expected to draw 40,000 guests and will feature several special exhibitions: The Female Design Council will host a showcase of textile works by female artists, the Corning Museum will present a glass-blowing exhibit, and the Heller Gallery will host Queer Voices, an exhibit curated by Brooklyn-based FagSigns founders Matthew Day Perez and Kate Hush of original neon works which speak to the LGBTQ community…
beautiful bizarre
neon sculptor meryl pataky
Mixed media artist Meryl Pataky has a refreshing take on the world that comes out in her art…Since neon signs can be found in many business establishments, neon artists find themselves fighting against the label of “sign maker” and have to work hard to be seen as fine artists. Pataky manages to find a balance of craftsman and artist in her work…
creative boom
female behavior: artist kate hush puts naughty, wicked women in neon lights
"When a diamond is cut it fluoresces blue or red, not unlike how a person could be described. He is feeling blue, or she is red with anger. In people, in objects, solid states are disrupted. These rips are the the road to a blinding denouement." This friction is what Kate Hush captures in intricately thin silhouettes – bodies and scenery made of light…
convicts nyc
kate hush
There’s a subset of people who think all women are wicked and that we all want money and that we just use sex to get ahead and all this other terrible stuff, but I don’t see that in day to day life. So if these guys want to see a wicked woman, I’m going to show them what a wicked woman is.
News break
‘She Bends: Women in Neon’ breaking the bright glass ceiling
Neon signs are a hallmark of American culture, decorating seedy bars and gentleman’s clubs with bright announcements of drinks and women inside. This primarily commercial craft has been traditionally male-dominated, but Meryl Pataky of “She Bends: Women in Neon” has been working to change this, inviting female-identifying neon benders to showcase their art across the nation since 2017…
Times call
‘She Bends: Women in Neon’ breaking the bright glass ceiling with traveling exhibit
“There are so many elements of ‘She Bends’ that are so unique to our time,” said Kelsey Issel, “She Bends” programming director. “And the medium of neon just has such historical context and weight… The context, and in the weight of the medium itself, and its history — being used in fine art by women to explore their messages about their gender, or their body image or their voice is so powerful.”…
San francisco chronicle
neon is the guiding light
For Meryl Pataky, mystical energy intertwines with scientific methodology behind each neon art installation she creates. She approaches it with deep spiritual devotion, as a disciple in a profound encounter with her guru, and with an extreme attention to the process. “Benders are craftsmen who personally create their work from design to production, whereas designers hire other people to make their work. I am definitely a bender.”…
new york magazine
This Artist Bends Neon Into Life-Size Sculptures of Wicked Women
Neon-bending has traditionally been a boys’ club, but Kate Hush is changing that. The Brooklyn-based artist charms light into striking sculptures of women who aren’t afraid to have their way with men — her own way of subverting neon’s seedy, motel-sign past for a female-led vision of neon art today. We stepped into her studio to learn more about the dangerous art of bending light, being in a boys’ club, and wicked, wicked women…
LA Magazine
five neon artists we recommended you follow Go IRL with a Group Show
The piece is part of All Lit Up, a show featuring illuminated works by (Lisa) Schulte, and fellow neon artists Leticia Maldonado, and Linda Sue Price. If those names sound familiar listed together, it might be because all of the artists were included in a January Los Angeles article entitled “5 Neon Artists You Need to Follow on Instagram”…
absolut
olivia steele
Olivia Steele harnesses the power of neon to assert symbolic phrasing that allures and provokes. Her expansive career has seen her impart fragments of wisdom and wit all over the globe, from Tulum to Berlin to Mumbai in the form of site specific land art and indoor installation. Aside from the immediately iconic and often humorous style of Steele's work, her interventions are pointedly placed in environments that prompt existential musings…
nike
AIR MOVES MERYL PATAKY
When processing neon tubes, the presence of air is not desired. Seeing this as an opportunity to rethink and retrain herself on how to look at air outside the limiting confines of neon, Meryl approached air in her piece the same way most people do – as something we all have in common as living and breathing beings: A life force. Inspired by the colors of the Air Max 270, Meryl incorporates the classic colors into her piece…
fad magazine
young artist to watch…olivia steele
There has been a lot of talk regarding neon art of late, A current exhibition at the Grundy museum in Blackpool, entitled – Neon: The Charged Line, features some of the biggest names who work in this striking medium. But there is a new generation of artists who have taken up the baton of this medium, reinventing and reconfiguring neon work to speak directly to the concerns of a new audience. One artist leading this field is Olivia Steele…
hype beast
neon sign installations by olivia steele
Neon is everywhere in cities, rather ironically used to draw attention to a given space in a sea of similar lights. Playing on the pervasive nature of the material, Nashville-bred artist Olivia Steele uses neon in installations to charge them with distinctive emotional messaging. Exclamations like “Wish You Were Here” and “Let’s Get Lost” on images of bombings and a bush of greenery, add a sharp, poignant wit to everyday found objects, blurring the line between interior and exterior.
mondo neon
The Value of Pursuing Your Craft & Exhibiting Neon with Artist Meryl Pataky
This episode of the “Mondo Neon Show” we're talking with San Francisco-based artist Meryl Pataky about her focus on sculpture, real versus impostor neon, curating She Bends (a traveling exhibition spotlighting women who bend and design their own neon creations), and so much more!